If you want to organise other games please go ahead using the same topic to consolidate all the information in one place and hopefully get more games together within our community. These games are for PvP, PvAI & PvPvAIso come along and we'll get some games going!

Lore:We know some of you guys love to role play whilst using Distant Stars, and here's a topic for you guys to post all of your role playing stories, character profiles and anything else you can imagine.

Maps:Some of you avid map makers out there have produced some great maps but never really had them recognised because they've got lost. Well here's a topic for you to post a link to the download (we can even provide mirrors if necessary) a screenshot or two of the map for us all the preview and if enough people like it we'll even include the map in with the actual mod!

Please visit our website and for more information, change logs, downloads, and to report bugs. Our website can be found here: http://distantstars.mmobase.com

Please include as much information as possible, if you have an error log feel free to post it on these forums and we'll take it from there. If you can reproduce the error please include the error log (read below to find out how to enable error logs) and include as much detail on how to reproduce the problem.

Open the user.setting file (using Notepad, Wordpad or any text editor) and scroll down to the bottom 7 lines from the bottom is the line:LogOutput FALSEChange FALSE to TRUELogOutput TRUE

and from then on any Log files will be saved to the debug folder:Windows Vista/Windows 7: C:\Documents and Settings\<Your Windows Username>\Local Settings\Application Data\Ironclad Games\Sins of a Solar Empire\DebugorWindows XP: C:\Documents and settings\<Your Windows Username>\Local Settings\Application Data\Ironclad Games\Sins of a Solar Empire\Debug

If you get these log files to us (you can just paste them in to a forum post) we can hopefully get your issues sorted.

Frequently Asked Questions

All files are compressed using 7Zip to shrink the download filesize. To extract these files you must use WinRAR or 7Zip.Any Patches should overwrite the original install directory, either by extracting over the original folder, or cut/copy & pasting over the existing file/folder structure.

1) My game keeps crashing, is there anything I can do to stop it?i) Are you running the game on maximum (highest) settings? if so, lower them to High or Medium, there is a known issue with the game using up too much memory, there is nothing we can do about this, also no matter how powerful your pc is, it is affected by this issue no matter the pc it is not above this crashing issue, it is a game problem not a hardware one, so quite simply lower your settings. If you still have an issue with crashing see point two.ii) Give us as detailed information as possible about the crash, what was happening at the time of the crash, what races, ships, abilities were involved. If you can supply a Debug Log (see above for more information about logging) and post a bug report on our website.

2) The loading screens and portrait pictures dont appear properly, whats wrong?i) This is an issue with ATI based graphics cards (rarely affects Nvidia based cards) we're looking in to the issue.

3) Why dont you support converting Distant Stars in to TXT format?i) Quite simply many things can go wrong with converting your mod to TXT, we cant help you with something you've probably broken yourself.

4) Can I mod Distant Stars for myself?i) Yes you can however please do not distribute our mod or our mod that you have edited to the public. You must ask for permission to do so, we will regrettably stop distributing our mod to all if users abuse our work.

5) Your mod is in BIN format I can't edit the files, what can I do?i) You can convert the mod to TXT format however we wont offer any support to versions of the mod that have been converted to TXT.

6) Why is Distant Stars distributed in BIN format?i) Mods load faster in BIN format and are less likely to have issues in this format.

8) Is there any way to make new maps for Distant Stars using GalaxyForge?i) Within the Distant Stars Extras folder there is a folder called Galaxy Forge, Copy and Paste this folder (or its contents) over your original Galaxy Forge folder (or its contents) replacing any files if it asks you to. When you start Galaxy Forge next you'll be able to use all of our planets.

Or, the DIY approach (without custom icons):

ii) The GalaxyForge supplied by the devs will still work with our Mod, however to be able to access all of our planetary bonuses, templates, planet types and stars you will need to take our GalaxyScenarioDef.galaxyScenarioDef (found in the GameInfo folder of the mod) and place it in to your GalaxyForge folder, overwriting the original GalaxyScenarioDef.galaxyScenarioDef (if you still wish to make maps for the original game keep a backup of the original file). This will allow you to use all of the Galaxy changes included in our mod.

Note: Any maps made for Distant Stars will not work with other Mods. See #8.2 for DIY instructions for map making or take the appropriate files from Entrenchment, they're cross-client compatible.

Some statistics...

Since August 2009 to February 2011 we have had over...

400,000 Unique visits to the website12,000GB (12TB) of data transferred from our website

That equates to over 60,000 Unique downloads of the entire mod, excluding the excess of 20,000 Patches downloaded.

Thanks to everyone that has supported us this far and making our mod as popular as it is!

quick question, in Diplomacy, the research speed has taken a sharp increase in time to complete.

I read earlier that setting research time to "fast" will have the same speed as in Entrenchment, but the research time is still the same, I tried normal and fastest but still no ultra quick research.

Any ideas?

The checksum matches, everything else seems to be in order too (except the missing research icon, which i understand is the cap derelict ships, not carried that out yet, the ai seems to yoink them all)

Upon further study of the issue, I found that Diplomacy did a massive overhaul to the Gameplay constants (which also explains why there is no longer any pirate caps in the pirate raids, though currently that is a good thing). When Nacey set up the 0.5 beta he was doing so in a hurry for he had a serious RL event in his life. It will be changed soon, probably with the next update so please stay tuned.

Upon further study of the issue, I found that Diplomacy did a massive overhaul to the Gameplay constants (which also explains why there is no longer any pirate caps in the pirate raids, though currently that is a good thing). When Nacey set up the 0.5 beta he was doing so in a hurry for he had a serious RL event in his life. It will be changed soon, probably with the next update so please stay tuned.

Indeed the gameplay.constants has taken a rather large hit in the last patch my apologies in my rush to get the patch out quickly before leaving for the weekend (got back a couple hours back) I didnt have time to double check my changes to that file.However I will note that the previous "Fast" changes are now applied to the "Faster" setting, obviously the fastest setting see'ing as they are an incredible enhancement on the stock game speed settings. I'll look in to all of the issues posted over the weekend tomorrow once I have had some sleep lol.

Quoting Ryat, reply 2283@ midnighter90- did you try unzipping to the desktop first before moving it over?Yes, still no luck. I think it's Creatives driver's which are causing a incompatibility with Win7x64 and Sins. Need to investigate this....

Quoting Ryat, reply 2283@ midnighter90- did you try unzipping to the desktop first before moving it over?Yes, still no luck. I think it's Creatives driver's which are causing a incompatibility with Win7x64 and Sins. Need to investigate this....

I'm using an XFI xtreme music with Win7 x64, try disabling sound enhancements

Found a bug, in the Diplomacy screen, if you select one of the custom portraits, they show up as totally fucked up portraits, I played as the blond Advent and it when I clicked to see the other players screen it changed to a Vassari. This is probably due to the fact that it is still a beta and was uploaded without this being fixed. Probably ported over from the Entrenchment version, because the extra portraits use up the same slots as the new portraits for diplomacy, I checked in the .tga's, will be such a pain to fix all that myself, seing as I still can't get my head around to coding them in the game so that they all work. Waiting for news on this. It's like one of the only bugs I have encountered in this otherwise, perfect mod.

Why am I applying a patch to an already supposedly completed release? That... makes no sense. My understanding was that if I redownloaded the most current release and simply followed the steps, it would work. Why would I also be patching it when the folders in use are completely different and the mods are in the mod folders so they don't actually affect the game files.

Or at least that's what I would think would work.

Not to sound like an ass, but patching a fresh install doesn't really make sense.

In order:

Updated to newest Sins patches: sins/diplo/entrench

Downloaded newest full install.

Put into proper folders.

So what I haven't read anywhere is that the newest DS patch is specifically for the newest Sins update. I guess I need that clarified.

One of the Diplomacy researches doesnt seem to work. It's the one that supposedly removes the differences in the races (what i mean is it removes the diplomatic penalty for being of a different race) I'm not sure if this is Diplomacy itself, or if it is the mod. Also, i've only noticed this with Advent, as i havent played with the other races yet.

The game also seems slightly unstable (not sure if this is my computer, the mod, or the beta status of Diplomacy that is causing this though...) I was wondering how to access the .dmp files to find out the problem?

Found a bug, in the Diplomacy screen, if you select one of the custom portraits, they show up as totally fucked up portraits, I played as the blond Advent and it when I clicked to see the other players screen it changed to a Vassari. This is probably due to the fact that it is still a beta and was uploaded without this being fixed. Probably ported over from the Entrenchment version, because the extra portraits use up the same slots as the new portraits for diplomacy, I checked in the .tga's, will be such a pain to fix all that myself, seing as I still can't get my head around to coding them in the game so that they all work. Waiting for news on this. It's like one of the only bugs I have encountered in this otherwise, perfect mod.